A woman told me last week that she had read one text message forty times and still could not say what it meant, and that the strangest part was how tired she felt afterward, as if she had run somewhere. If you are looking for how to stop overthinking in a relationship, I would start by saying that the tiredness makes sense, because overthinking is work, and you have been doing it unpaid for hours.
The good news is that overthinking is a habit of attention rather than a fact about you, and habits of attention can be moved with small, kind, repeatable things. None of them require you to feel less. They ask you to give your mind a different job for ten minutes, and that turns out to be enough more often than you would expect.
What your mind is trying to do
When you replay a conversation or draft a reply in your head for the fifth time, your mind is trying to protect you. It wants certainty, because certainty would let you relax, and since certainty is not on offer it builds the next best thing, which is a rehearsal for every way the evening could go.
I find it helps to see that as care that has lost its direction. The part of you doing the replaying loves you and is working with the only tool it has, and the tool is a loop. Once you can say that to yourself without annoyance, the loop loses some of its grip, and you get a little room to choose what to do with the evening instead.
How to stop overthinking in a relationship: give the loop one time
The most useful trick I know is to stop fighting the thinking and schedule it. Pick a time of day, ideally not close to bed, and give yourself fifteen minutes to think about the relationship as much as you like, with a pen and a page. When the loop starts at some other hour, you say, kindly, that it has an appointment at six, and you go back to the dishes.
It sounds too simple to work, and it works because the loop is mostly afraid of being forgotten. Written down, a worry takes up one line instead of a whole afternoon, and you will often find that the thing you were certain you would lose by not thinking about it fits on half a page, with space left over for a cup of tea.
Ask the question that has an answer
Overthinking mostly asks questions about another person’s mind, such as what he meant, whether she is pulling away, or why the reply was so short. Those questions have no answer you can reach alone, which is exactly why they run in circles. A question about your own side has an answer, and it is usually smaller and calmer.
Try swapping one for the other. Instead of what did he mean by that, ask what you would like to know and whether there is a plain way to ask. Instead of why is she quiet, ask what you need tonight and who could give you some of it. The conversation you were rehearsing alone often turns out to be one sentence long when you say it to the person.
Let your body finish the thought
A lot of overthinking is a nervous system with nowhere to put its restlessness, and the quickest way out is rarely more thinking. Walk around the block without your phone, or run cold water over your wrists, or put both feet flat on the floor and breathe out for longer than you breathe in. Two minutes of that will not solve anything, but it lowers the volume enough that you can hear which thought is actually yours.
The Two of Swords is the card I think of here, the figure sitting blindfolded with the blades crossed over her heart, holding very still. You can read the Two of Swords as a picture of a decision being circled, and the gentle part of the card is that the blindfold is a choice she can lift when she is ready, and that the swords are hers to put down.
When it is a pattern, and when it is a person
It is worth noticing whether your overthinking switches on with one particular person or follows you into every relationship. If it is mostly one person, it may be that their messages are inconsistent and your mind is doing the sensible thing, which is trying to make a pattern out of scraps. The piece on why you cannot stop thinking about someone goes into that.
If it follows you everywhere, that is useful to know too, and it often connects to how you learned to feel safe with people. The attachment style quiz takes a few minutes and tends to give people words for something they have felt for years.
What is worth doing today
You do not need to win against your thoughts. You need a few small habits that give you your evenings back, and a reminder that the care underneath the loop is a strength you can aim somewhere kinder. If you would like a second pair of eyes on a particular worry, a free reading is a gentle place to set it down and see it in daylight.
Whatever you decide about the message, the person, or the conversation, the deciding is yours, and you already know more about what you need than the loop has been letting you hear.
Clara
